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3-button Optical Mice?
proclus asks: "Does anyone else think that scroll wheels are a clunky replacement for the middle button? Mice are supposed to have three buttons, right? It was such an improvement when the three button mice started appearing for PC hardware, but I'm wondering, where are the optical ones?"
Most optical mice out there (at least the Microsoft ones) have more than three buttons, usually five. I don't know about the article poster, but the scroll wheel is a very useful technical advancement.
You misunderstood. He want a third button, but he doesn't like the scroll wheel being the third button. He considers it clunky.
:P
To the asker: Sorry, but it's not going to change. People are used to clicking their mwheel as the third mouse button, and it seems a waste to add a third button and remove the mwheel's click.
If you really don't want to use the mwheel to click the third button, perhaps you can get an Intellimouse Explorer and remap the fourth or fifth button to the functions the third button typically handles, and use those instead? Otherwise, I don't think it's going to happen, unless a company brings out an optical mouse without a wheel. And some things are too useful to discard - How many keyboards don't have the numpad? Not many, if any at all. It's a lot more useful than ScrlLock.
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
I use my middle button extensively (clicking on links and closing tabs in mozilla) and find no problem at all clicking it. ;-)
I'm not sure why you want something with less functionality.
I suppose you could glue the mouse wheel so it doesn't move and pretend its just a button
no sig.
I know what you mean. I have the Logitech dual optical (available at ThinkGeek for the low low price of 35.99)
there is a tumb button that is useful if you think the middle mouse button on the scroll is somewhat useless. of sourse you still have the scroll, but it's worth a shot, yeah?
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Wheel mice are great, only Solaris users really need three and even then wheels are usable under Solaris. Considering I am looking at a banner ad for mice I can only think this is astroturfing. Next we'll see you spouting off about the joys of using a one button mouse. Be gone ye layer of phony shrubbery.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Ummmm,
Try just about any optical mouse over $15. They'll have a middle button, usually in the wheel (as in 2nd and 1st posts).
But then they also may have buttons for your thumb, and other fingers.
The MX700 has 3 middle buttons not counting the one combined with the wheel.
(it also has 2 thumb buttons an the normal click and alt click.)
Last, could we PLEASE have more cool articles? This one is pretty much dog food.
I have a friend who has a three button mouse; no scroll wheel. I find myself sitting there stroking the middle button like some sort of pervert.
The scroll wheel makes life so much easier - just checking through /. this morning I used it at least as often as the left mouse button. Why on earth would anyone want to get rid of it, particularly when you can click it as well?
I love the scroll wheel. It is possibly the most significant UI innovation of the last ten years.
:-/
But I hate having it clickable as the third button.
Particularly in Konqueror, I find myself scrolling through a document, and suddenly I press too hard on the wheel and it jumps me to some random hyperlink that I hadn't even noticed let alone intended to click on. *grrrrr*
Personally I'd rather have a scroll wheel than a third button. The third button is nice, and I always liked having it, but the wheel is better, and the two don't co-exist too well.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Mouse Systems was one of the original makers of optical mice, since back in the early 1980s, and made a nice simple & solid three-button optical mouse. Unfortunately they got bought out recently and the new owners, KYE International, are making the same two-button/scroll mice as everyone else.
Here's a picture of the actual three-button optical mouse.
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I've always liked the combo scrollwheel/middle button. I can scroll up and down in Konqueror and open links in new windows/tabs quickly.
The one thing I would like is a finner grained detent on the wheel. Two to four time greater resolution would be nice. I'm not talking about the distance (number of lines) scrolled with each detent/click of the wheel. I want a greater number of clicks/detents per revolution of the actaul wheel.
I have a Logitech MX-300, which has a clickable scroll whell, and a small button under it that performs the same function (i.e. the button and wheel both map to the middle button). The wheel could be easily removed if you didn't want it. I had the mouse open so I could tape it up and prevent the sides of the mouse from glowing red (optical mouse manufacturers seem to think everyone wants a brightly glowing mouse - I haven't seen an optical USB mouse without this "feature"), and the wheel falls right out. Or you could just adjust the spring tension so the wheel can be easily clicked (IMHO, it's a bit too hard to press by default).
Since I have five fingers, a mouse should have five buttons.
If a mouse is going to have numerous buttons, they need to have clear, discernable functionality within an OS. LMB = select, RMB = context, Scroll = move view. These make sense, but I'm not sure what else would, please feel free to enlighten me. Can anyone make a case for features that other mouse buttons could use? I'm not talking about customising buttons for starting file managers or browsers, as these are just shortcuts, but clear-cut functionality that help users navigate and operate withint the GUI metaphor.
I have a Kensington MouseInABox. Optical, USB, four buttons plus clickable wheel, but the buttons can be mapped so that the wheel doesn't have to be button 3...
Cheap mice, optical, 3 buttons + 2 non-clickable scroll wheels (I, personally can't live without the wheels). I have one wireless (IR) at the office and a normal (wired) one at home.
I am not affiliated in any way with the company, just fan of their products.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
here
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I've got a stupid question. Instead of asking my friends what they think or doing a little research online, I'll post the question on Slashdot and see what the largest collection of wannabe geeks on the Internet think. When you flush the toilet in the Southern Hemisphere, which way does the water spin?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
I found, after getting a wheeled mouse at home, that I was trying to use the wheel by instinct on mice that were wheel-less. My solution was to disable support for scrolling with the wheel in X. The side effect of that is that the wheel then only behaves as the middle button (solving the middle click and scroll awkwardness).
:)
:)
While optical mice are nice, I've also not seen any that are just three simple buttons. I was, about a year ago, able to find a plain three button non-optical PS/2 mouse. If it weren't dedicated to my old Tektronix Xterminal, I'd have it on my workstation. I've never looked for another one like it (too lazy).
I've also tried the IntelliMouse Explorer style setup with thumb and pinky buttons. On those I just end up clicking by accident as I move the mouse around. So, again in X I don't bind the 4th and 5th buttons to anything, and I just hope I don't have to use those mice in Windows.
Overall, my preference is for older real 3 button mice or for a two button plus wheel mouse with scrolling via the wheel disabled. Yeah, yeah, I'm strange... So what.
Sun makes 3-button opticial USB mice, and they ship with most of their new workstations. You could probably pick them up as spare parts, but they're probably fairly costly.
We didn't look very hard did we?
www.logitech.com
MX700: 7 buttons with scroll, wireless, and optical. All the features that you don't need in one small package.
Does anyone else think that mice are a clunky replacement for the track ball? Mice are supposed to have a trackball, right? It was such an improvement when the 5 button optical trackballs w/ scroll started appearing for PC hardware, but I'm wondering, why would anyone want to use anything else?
--End missquote
Self absorb much? Your working on some serious assumptions and opinions that you are taking as facts. Why is this a front page item?
My Logitech MX300 has a button which is supposed to act as a task switcher. Under the Linux mouse drivers I'm using, it acts as a middle mouse button. Also, there was some older hardware I've found that had the old Mouse Systems three button mice (Sun's Type 4 mouse) in a serial configuration with an AC adapter powering the LEDs. You'd need the special mouse pad for it, but that too is optical. :)
:)
Quite frankly, I'm overjoyed that PCs now come standard with scrollwheel mice that can be used as a three button mouse. I'm glad I won't ever have to remember how to chord again.
FWIW, I used to prefer a 3 button mouse over a mouse w/wheel, until I actually started using them.
Of course, YMMV.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Even when I use a Mac, I find that having a single button was a hindrance. I'm a guy who's big on shortcuts, so consequently I did a lot of my navigation in Mac OS by using nothing more than keyboard commands (I loved being able to type the name of a folder or file and get it selected, then to expand all trees by hitting Shift-Command-Right Arrow, or collapse). But I always wanted that same kind of ease-of-use with the mouse as well. I always felt that you should be able to navigate solely by using the mouse or keyboard alone.
The idea of context menus was something I was very happy with when I started using PCs. I was very glad when Apple decided to include context menus in OS9, but I was angry that you couldn't use a two-button mouse to accomplish that. What's the point of having context menus if you have to hit Command-Click to use them?
I have the Logitech cordless freedom keyboard and mouse pair. The mouse is the Cordless Mouseman Optical. I got it because it has a third button. A thumb button! I also hate clicking the scroll wheel, but I like scrolling the scroll wheel. The mouse is perfect in every way, I've even made it work in linux and windows. I highly reccomend it.
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Why would you want to dampen the glow?
Anyhow, my mouse, the Logitech MX 700, doesn't have any glowing, the entire thing is solid coloured. I'd assume the MX 500 is the same.
..can you 'accidently' click on a wheel/button?
Christ, no wonder the lot of you have RSI.
Here's a tip - Don't hang on to your mouse for dear life. It isn't going anywhere.
I assume by contextual menus you mean that little menu next to the curser that has options like open or create archive?
OS X has native multi button support, including scroll wheel and 3rd button, and in classic most companies make an extension for their mouse that lets you add multi button functionality to the finder
To address the original question thow, I also find the scroll wheel to be clunky, useful, but clunky. I however found the Kensington wireless studio mouse which has a 3rd middle button and a touch sensitive scroll pad(something like a mini track pad). It eliminates the chunkiness of a scroll wheel, but leaves the functionality intact. Their wired version features the same button layout, if you don't like the freedom of wireless.
Don't save your orgasms for Heaven; Heaven knows we need them here.
Ok, I'm actually going to not flame you. Everyone else did a good enough job of that ;-). I've found my favorite mouse in the whole world, it's the IBM optical scroll point mouse. This mouse has 800 dpi percision, 3 buttons, and a scroll point that does 360 degree scrolling without having to keep cranking a wheel. It's incredible, and it's comfortable too. The scroll point glows a cool blue color too ;)
.:Jon:.
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Which finger do you use to click the middle button? Me I use the index finger and move it back and forth between the left button and the scroll wheel how about you? I use the middle finger for right clicking, is it out of habit? Is there a new breed of mouse users that grew up with three buttons and so use the index, middle AND ring finger for clicking? A single finger for each button? Is there grant money available to research this? Is it possible to create a /. post entirely out of questions? No.
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OS X has native multi button support, including scroll wheel and 3rd button, and in classic most companies make an extension for their mouse that lets you add multi button functionality to the finder
I should have mentioned this. Yes, OSX does indeed have multi-button support built-in (it was based on Unix; why wouldn't, it, right?). But unfortunately when I was in college and working with a multi-button mouse on our school newspaper, we couldn't use that third-party utility in OS9 (couldn't use OSX because our publishing software didn't support it) because it crashed our system. Why Apple couldn't have written support for multiple buttons into its system directly, though, I have no idea, especially because the signals sent from a mouse are standardized and thus easy to work with from a coding perspective.
Lots of replies of the form "But I always need my scrolly button so you must be stupid."
I have eight Logitech three button mice. I like them a lot. I reprogram the middle button to double-click, because I don't like RSI and I think the double-click idea really sucks. I use the keyboard 95% of the time and only reach for the mouse when some lazy application programmer couldn't be arsed to take the 5 microseconds needed to put a keyboard shortcut in for a specific function.
I hate the scrolly wheel. I don't want a scrolly wheel. Yes I know they can be clicked, but they are designed to be scrolled, not clicked, so the click spring is much stronger than the spring on the other two buttons. Besides, you can scroll with the keyboard (or at least you will be able to when Mozilla works out that the currently selected tab is the one that should have the keyboard focus, not the one that's just finished loading). I'm not saying YOU, dear Reader, need to, just that I do, and I don't want to be reaching for the mouse when I can move my fingers to the up/down keys.
So, I personally can guarantee a market of eight optical three button mice for Logitech when they come out at a decent price. Oh, I had a look at the MX700. It's a fucking air traffic control centre that needs at least 23 people to operate. OVERKILL, people! I want an OPTICAL version of my three button mouseman, that's all. And the MX700 costs about $90. I'm NOT buying eight of those. (if you're wondering, 8=3 at work+3 at home+2 spare. Yes, I really like them a lot. Every time I get a computer with a mouse with a clitoris I replace it with a 3BMM.) Three button mousemen are currently going for about $25 in the UK. I'd pay $40 for an optical version, cos I'm bored with cleaning dirty balls and rollers. But I'm not going to buy ANYTHING that has a scrolly wheel on; I'd rather stick with my current mice.
So if anyone's with me, mod me up, and someone pass a reference to this article to Logitech.
Parts Needed:
3 button optical mouse with wheel
Set of screwdrivers (prolly just need a #0 and #1 phillips)
X-Acto Knife
McDonald's Straw - I am not sure if other straws will work it needs to be thermo softening while being thick enough for wear and pliable enough for use.
Personal flamethrower or lighter or soldering iron
krazy glue
about 30 minutes of your time.
Heres how to do it:
- With the X-Acto knife make a faint score on the mouse wheel along the profile where it sticks out of the mouse
- Remove mouse cover (typically by removing 2 screws maybe 3 in your case)
- carefully remove the screw holding the circut board to the upper mouse casing
- Remove the wheel and action spring noting how they were installed.
- Trim the mouse wheel with the X-Acto knife so that it is almost flush with the mouse case (using your earlier score) - Nice thing here is you have 3 chances if you mess up at first because you can just rotate the wheel 120 degrees and have a fresh surface!
- Cut the straw latterally so as to be able to lay it flat and cut a section off which is approximately 35% longer than the exposesed mouse wheel opening in the upper shell of the mouse
- Heat the straw fragment (dont burn it) until it lays almost flat on your work surface (you do still want some curve)
- place the mouse wheel back on the curcuit board with the flattened side up (away from the board
- place the now flattened straw fragment over teh mouse wheel centering it.
- once you have things the way you want them remove the upper cover again and the trimmed straw fragment
- place a single tiny drop of krazy glue on the former wheel and immediately recenter the star fragment on it
- wait a few minutes as the off gas of the glue will cloud the optics of your mouse if you re-assembled immediately.
- Re-assemble the mouse and you now have a 3 button no wheel mouse!
Congratulations!Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I have the MX700 and it absolutely rules. The back/forward buttons are great and the rechargeable batteries last *forever*. It even runs under RH8. The size and shape of the mouse take some getting use to though. And lefties need not apply.
I generally set the midle button wheel to the Backspace key, it EASILY allows you to go "back" in pretty much any browser. I have a logitech mouse, and use Phoenix (er um Firebird) and it doesn't feel clunky in the least.
oh god the painful thoughts...
Next weapon - mwheelup
Prev weapon - mwheeldown
And I have no problem using the middle button for alt fire in UT and Q3A mods that have altfire weapons. (Or otherwise for zooming).
Just get a GOOD scrollwheel that has good click action in the wheel (i.e. it's hard to accidentally scroll it.)
Any optical with a wheel made by MS or Logitech usually has a pretty good scrollwheel. I've used both brands (IM Explorer, classic IMs, and a cheapo Logitech non-MX optical), and all of them have good scrollwheels.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I too prefer a full size button to the down position of the scroll wheel. I still haven't found one that I don't often scroll-and-click when I want to just click or accidentally click when I want to scroll. I do like the wheel once in a while though. Is anybody making a mouse with the wheel in the thumb position? I've seen buttons there, but no wheels. I don't care if its optical or not, ball mice treat me just fine..
/. in summary: Really insightful: get modded down. Pander to the /. masses (with a content-free troll or something that states the obvious or your opinions with no argument to back up): get modded up.
(Yes this is flamebait. ;-) )
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
IBM makes a 3 button no-wheel optical mouse. Try looking yourself next time.
All the artists I know hate the scroll wheel. They want 3 button mice.
Some software apps use all three buttons and combinations of them and keys to do things.
When its button 1 and 2 with a scroll wheel, all day long, it gets uncomfortable.
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
And once again it's got the fsking scroll wheels right where there should be a button. ONLY a button.
It's great that all you folk out there like your scroll wheels. I've no desire to take them away from you. But I've been up and down the rows at the various stores, and I've STFW, and real three-button mouse have become pretty much impossible to find at a reasonable price - for the very obvious reason that MS Windows supports wheelies and doesn't have any use for the third button.
Oh, and by real I mean one that shaped more-or-less like a standard mouse, and has three equal-size, equal-height, equal-effort buttons at the top front, where I can press them. No scrolly wheel, no side buttons, no fancy software. Under $30 would be nice.
that would be your third mouse button
Almost all the old mice were "optical" too, they used plastic rollers on the balls which sensed movement with LEDs... optically.
It's flamebait because he starts off calling most people "lusers," declares the scroll wheel to be an "abomination," slants the MS Natural Keyboard by calling it "unnatural," and declares that since people buy them, they must be idiots.
...which they are...
Um... not to be rude, but I don't see your point. That most people are lusers is somewhat debatable, but the scroll wheel IS an abomination (I'd kill for an optical 3-button no-scrollwheel mouse!) the so-called "natural" keyboard IS unnatural, and people who buy them may not be idiots, but those who LIKE them certainly are. So far nothing he's said has been particularly harsh or uncalled for.
Then he starts to make a rational post, but goes awry again when he complains about "'Windows enhanced' pieces of shit."
He then declares that he doesn't want to pay more for a higher quality product.
It's not "higher quality:" it's "more useless 'features' which hinder productivity"
And as if the initial insults weren't enough, he uses the phrase "Masses are Asses." He then agrees with someone else, and then finishes up with an ever-so-slightly insightful comment.
Listen closely... the 'needs' of the general masses are shaping what computer products get produced. These people are (largely) not computer-obsessed enough to appreciate how detrimental some of their preferences would be to the rest of us. This would be fine (to each his own) except that hardware manufacturers, seeing the massive market, DROP THEIR OTHER PRODUCTS. This forces the computer-obsessed to use consumer-grade crap, or pay lots extra for specially-made standard hardware.
A certain bitterness at the masses of computer-adjacent morons that changed the world from a "Mice I use are cheap and easy to find" place to a "I must pay lots of money for a mouse even close to ideal" kind of place is understandable.
I want my Cowboyneal
Cut and paste. Click is better than click-ctrl-v or click-meta-v or click shft-ins.
I thought this was what MMB was always for.
Here's a thought. The local Goodwill store has plenty of old keyboards, you could probably pick one up for around five to ten bucks. Most of them still work, the former owners probably upgraded to one of those WinEnhanced boards. If not, you're only out ten bucks at most. You might not find anything USB or later, but you should find a bench-warmer or two for your good old IBM PC AT
Kensington has this little wireless gem that seems to have no scroll wheel. Their text talks about scrolling though...
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
How about the Logitech, and remap the thumb button?
It has three buttons and a scroll slider instead of a wheel (which may also act as a button).
More at their site, plus a few more details in their sales sheet (pdf).
(On some Kensington models, the third button doesn't do anything without the drivers. Not sure about the StudioMouse).
And you, sir, are a cowardly moron. I did not SAY Windows keyboards don't work under Linux. I said the Windows Natural keyboard was unnatural and it is. Regarding the insipid "Windows" keys, there are already enough bucky bits with shift, control, and alt and their combinations. The Windows keys are unnecessary unoriginal imitations of the Apple keys on various Macintoshes (which do or at least did need them because they didn't have alt). They're stupid, but they can be turned into Tux keys and/or ignored so I don't really care about them. The real annoyance of modern average keyboards, beyond their typically mushy feel, is the number of extra keys they insist on including in addition to the Windows keys. What's wrong with the scroll wheel is that it makes a poor middle button as other posters have mentioned and some of us use that button and have since before the scroll wheel existed. Whatever my faults, at least I don't hide behind the Anonymous Coward account. Drop dead.
I started out with a trackball, as my desk didn' really have room for a trackball. Now, I wouldn't have it any other way. I not only use one at home, I have one for work as well. Not only does it make scrolling (horizontal, as well as vertical) easy, I never have to worry about repositioning it, or bumping into anything. For me, a mouse is just a poor substitute for a proper pointing device.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Someone needs to come pop you in the head with a tack hammer because you are a retard. Why was something like this allowed to post?
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Mice are supposed to have three buttons, right?
Well, yes and no.
The first mouse had zero buttons. Later refinements from the NLS team added three buttons to the mouse, however. The mouse was originally supposed to have a chording keyboard for the other hand which could have multiple uses.
See a history in pictures from Douglas Engelbart's Bootstrap Alliance for details and more info.
I cheaper alternative is the MX300. It uses the same optical technology, which BTW is superior to their dual optical. The MX300 is the traditional left or right handed shape. I find it extremely comfortable. It may be a problem with people that have very large hands.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
I use Maya on a Win2k box at work, and I found it unreasonably difficult to use with a regular wheel mouse. I ended up getting an old-school Logitech 3-button ball mouse. The problem is that in Maya, you're constantly holding down various combinations of the 3 mouse buttons to zoom, pan, and rotate the 3d views. (This interaction scheme was developed on the SGI, which presumed a traditional 3-button mouse.)
While the wheel is a great feature, it isn't suitable for applications which require the third button to be held down for extended periods (rather than just *clicked*.)
The IBM Optical Navigator + IBM Model M Keyboard = Auto-Erotic Inputting
--- Do you believe in the day?
And then... while looking for something unrelated, I ran into this:
StupidaMouse by StupidaWorks.
Looks like someone has modernized the original mouse designs and found a new marketing niche for it.
the wheel is uncomfortable for clicking or any frequent use as a button. a middle mouse button is critical in in apps like Maya and useful for quick pasting in shell windows.
this mouse is not optical and it's not cheap. but the pricing ($90-$140) shows how rare good 3 button mice have become.
This monkey has less than 4 asses. It's useless to me!
I'm not sure if that is a joke on my post, or a recomendation for trackballs.
;) I can make do with a mouse but have fallen in love with the trackball :)
If it is the former, well played. If the latter, your preaching to the choir